Our iGSM Internet Consultant Business Opportunity has existed for a few years but in the past few months we’ve radically changed it to meet changes in the industry, technology and most importantly, the economy. The recession has made a lot of us rethink our spending, so we took another look at the program to ask ourselves how to make it as effective as possible. Growing the Media Partner program is important to us primarily because our business model is client-centered. We want an ever-growing group of people who know how to listen to clients, learn their needs and teach them the possibilities of internet services.

So we got to brainstorming, testing, and even more brainstorming and fine tuning until we were satisfied we’d done everything we would to make the program fit four essential values:

Accessibility: The heart of our program used to be face to face training. These were great experiences for everyone. George Gill (our CEO) enjoyed the chance to get down to critical details in the face to face format, and Partners came away with a sense of empowerment to match their new knowledge. However, we asked ourselves: Who isn’t coming? The travel requirements often proved to be a barrier to people who didn’t have the time or extra funds to spare to come to Florida or Canada. Online training had always been an objective of ours, so we put it front and center. As new information came in, we decided to make that the heart of the entire program.

Cost Effectiveness: This is probably the most obvious item on our agenda. Money’s tight for a lot of people, so how could we offer the program for less? The original iGSM program was almost $10,000.00: a price tag that worked for the pre-recession reality, but was just too big now. By moving training online and restructuring the program into single modules we managed to cut the core iGSM training to just $795.

Flexibility: Restructuring also gave us the ability to make the program serve a wider variety of personal agendas. For instance, Core iGSM Certification is an intensive general course on internet consulting anyone can use, but it’s also the first step to a GILL Media membership: the process that authorizes you to resell GILL Media services. By switching to a modular format we can actually provide more, and increase the quality of training. For example, we now have the freedom to provide face to face intensive marketing training.

Leveraging Capabilities: Our services have expanded significantly since we started the program. We offer complete video production, copywriting and more online services than ever before. There was no reason to isolate the Partner Program from these changes. Once we really got a feel to how far we could go with these techniques in online training, there was no reason not to move most of our iGSM training to the Web.

We’re pretty happy with the results. After seeing people cling to the traditional model of offering one size fits all opportunities for tens of thousands of dollars, we thought it was high time to innovate. You can see the results at www.internetbusiness-opportunity.com.